Lens for newborn/baby photos

tsilver

Hi!

I just purchased the D3200 and I'm trying to learn how to use it properly before my baby arrives in October. I have the 18-55mm kit lens.

Was wondering if this is the best lens for me to learn with (extreme beginner, and only really interested in family/baby photography) or would a different lens be better for this purpose?

After I decide on a lens, I will definitely purchase your cheat sheets and start practicing. I just followed your step by step guide for indoor portraits, and you already made my photos a million times better!

Thanks!

bruto

The 18-55mm should be fine for learning, and you may find it fine for general use anyway. It is decently sharp, and has a useful range from wide to very slight telephoto. It's inexpensively made with lots of plastic and a few mechanical compromises, but it's optically good. I consider it a great lens for traveling, because it makes good pictures, it's light and compact, but is cheap to replace if it breaks.

tsilver

Thanks, I went ahead and purchased the cheat sheets for the lens I have, and I realize that shutter speed for the various portraits is not indicated. The photos turned out really dark, until I realized the problem by switching to auto mode and noticing that I was mistaking ISO for shutter speed, and that I needed to bring it way down to have the right level of brightness.

Is there a guide to shutter speeds available? How do you recommend setting it in the different portrait settings on the cheat sheets?

Thanks!

bruto

As a general rule, if you're using the kit lens with VR on, you will have little difficulty with camera shake at speeds above 1/30 second or so, which is the default speed at which auto ISO kicks in. But subject blur will occur if your subject is moving, so you probably want to keep the shutter speed up at 1/200 or so when you can. If the baby is asleep or sitting still, a slower shutter speed will keep the auto ISO from going so high, which is quieter and sharper. Portraits can be made at quite high ISO and still look OK, but you will see that as you go higher, the texture gets more grainy and dark areas will look less clean.

In manual mode, if you set your aperture and shutter speed with Auto ISO on, the camera's meter will reset the ISO to suit without changing your other settings. So you can choose what aperture and speed you like, set your starting ISO at 100, and let auto ISO adjust the exposure. If you are using Auto ISO, there is no benefit to starting at a high number.

If you want full manual control of ISO, you must turn off auto ISO in the menu. You would then choose appropriate settings for the light. 100 or 200 will work in broad daylight, 400 or 800 in outdoor shade, and up to 3200 or so indoors. The lower it is, the sharper and quieter, but better some digital noise than motion blur. When auto ISO is off, your manual settings will prevail even if they're wrong. You can use the meter readout to adjust them to agree with the meter, or, if you're adventurous, to purposely disagree.

Moose

Hey @tsilver - On the cheat cards, just beneath the "Initial Settings" you'll find the "Setup" instructions. In step three of the setup instructions, it will walk you through the process of determining the shutter speed. Those "Setup" instructions are critical to the final exposure. Regarding starter lenses for newborn/baby photos, I recommend the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G. It performs wonderfully in low light, gives you that beautiful blur to help make your subject pop and is extremely sharp. All the best!